South
Sudan's opposition leader Riek Machar speaks during a briefing ahead of
his return to South Sudan as vice president, in Ethiopia's capital Addis
Ababa, April 9, 2016.
The United Nations Security Council expressed serious concern on Tuesday over the failure of South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar to return to Juba to take up his old post as deputy to President Salva Kiir as part of a peace deal.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous
briefed the 15-member council on South Sudan at the request of the
United States. Machar had been due to return to Juba on Monday, but a
spokesman for his group said logistical reasons had delayed his travel.
Thousands
have been killed and more than 2 million people in a country of 11
million have been driven from their homes by more than two years of
fighting that erupted at the end of 2013, barely two years after South
Sudan's independence.
Kiir's decision to sack
Machar as his deputy in 2013 precipitated the crisis that erupted into
conflict in December that year. Fighting has often run along ethnic
lines, pitting Kiir's dominant Dinka ethnic group against Machar's Nuer.
Machar
and Kiir signed a peace deal in August that called for a transitional
government and other security arrangements to end the fighting. But
clashes have flared outside the capital and Machar has repeatedly
delayed his return.
"The members of the
Security Council ... reiterated that they are ready to address any
obstruction of implementation of the agreement," China's deputy U.N. ambassador, Wu Haitao, told reporters. China is president of the council for April.
Russian
Deputy U.N. Ambassador Petr Iliichev said Ladsous told the council
there was a huge lack of confidence between the parties but that the
U.N. peacekeeping chief was hopeful that Machar might return to Juba on
Wednesday.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
spoke to both Kiir and Machar by phone on Sunday and urged them to form a
transitional government quickly and roll out other parts of the fragile
peace deal.
The United States voiced dismay on Tuesday at Machar's failure to return to Juba.
"The
United States is extremely disappointed that Riek Machar has not
fulfilled his commitments under the peace agreement and returned to Juba
as he stated publicly he would," U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador David Pressman said.
"So
many international partners - including the U.N. and multiple member
states - have undertaken significant political and logistical efforts to
facilitate his return," he said.
إرسال تعليق